The bigger issue for me was the parents. Kids are supposed to make mistakes; it’s a large part of growing up. You hope that they keep those mistakes on the smaller scale and learn from them. What I didn’t expect was the way the adults handled those situations. Without getting into details, I will simply say that I was disappointed enough in the adults I was dealing with that I swore I would never get involved as a coach again.

Fast forward 8 years and 2 kids and I am at a bit of a crossroad. I officially became a hockey parent this season when the 4 year old signed up to play hockey. Since the day I coached that last game I swore I was going to sit in the stands, blend in with the other hockey parents and cheer for the little guy. He is the second youngest player on the team and I went on the ice for his first practice because he was a bit overwhelmed very early on. His second practice was worse. I wasn’t able to go on the ice at all, he panicked and left the ice after about 10 minutes. He wanted to play, but he wanted me on the ice with him at least at this point in the game. He’s now 5 years old and one of the youngest players on the ice, how can I argue with him about this?

We are now a couple of months into the season and I am officially an assistant coach of an Atom team. We played our first game of the season this weekend and I haven’t the slightest idea of what the score was. I cannot speak for the other kids on the team, but I know my 5 year old was extremely excited about getting to play his first game.

I haven’t openly admitted it but I am having a lot of fun coaching. I am still worried because I have a good idea of what to expect down the road from the parents but this is fun. I am not going to make any promises about how far I am going to go as a coach in the future but this is fun.

Stepping onto the ice for the first time!

I have been excited for this day, while at the same time dreading it, since the day the 4-year-old was born.

I am now officially a I hockey parent.

It began innocently enough. A trip to the local pro-shop with the 4-year-old in search of a visor for my referee helmet somehow evolved into his becoming a member of the Hawks Atom/Mite team with me on the ice helping out the team.

We were invited out to a practice so he could test the waters. Of course in order to do that, we needed to drop around $500 to gear him out. He lasted about 45 minutes of the hour plus session. He was a little overwhelmed and intimidated but had fun.

The second practice, the one we were supposed to sign him up at, didn’t go quite so well. Mrs. HockeyTrout was at work so I wasn’t able to skate the session. Being in a new situation with lots of kids he doesn’t know didn’t help any. He lasted 10 minutes and wanted out of there.

At this point he was flip-flopping back and forth about playing so we took the next practice off. We agreed that we were going to try one more practice and it would be one where I was able to skate since he didn’t know anyone. At the end of the practice when we announced it was time to play a game, he looked at me and said “A real hockey game?” Even being placed at a 3 on 1 disadvantage for various reasons couldn’t discourage him. He knocked in 2 goals in the scrimmage and is happy to tell you all about them.

I think it’s safe to say he’s hooked. If he isn’t, keep your eyes on Ebay for some deals on nearly new hockey equipment.

Ausable River, May 1st 2011

I even managed to get my friend Luke out with a fly rod this year, something we tried like heck to make happen last year with no success. During that trip, I learned that it was not only his first fly fishing trip, it was also his first ever fishing trip. Despite the fact that I took him to a small trout stream that I know very well and had never been skunked on before, we came up empty handed.

Fishing Valley Creek, Valley Forge National Park.

Last week, Mrs. HockeyTrout was out of town with my father-in-law. The trip was scheduled around refurbishing his apartment but it was also a good opportunity for them to spend some much needed time together. It also featured a few days before and after where she was either prepping him for the trip or helping finish the setup. That left me spending some much needed time at home with the kids. There are no ifs, ands or buts about it, I love my kids. With that said, after 9 straight days as pretty much a single parent, I need a day off. I have absolutely no idea how a real single parent manages, nor do I want to know.

That’s why tomorrow, rain or shine, I will be out with my fly rod chasing some trout. It will not matter if I catch anything, it will be more important that I spend the majority of the day by my lonesome. Sometimes, a bit of quiet time alone is all that is needed. With that said, if I manage to land a few trout along the way, even better.

The only remaining question is where I should wet my line…

Pathers forward David Booth following a blind-side hit to the head by the Flyers Mike Richards.

The current hot topic in all of sports right now, and understandably so, is concussions. This week I met a 17 or 18 year old kid who is finished playing hockey because of concussions. He spends 4 days a week in a hyperbolic chamber in hopes of reducing the symptoms he still deals with. They are also a hot topic in my house. I officiate and play ice hockey, I ride a motorcycle and my father in law has a disability from a head injury suffered in a car accident about a decade ago. My recreational activities place me in the high risk category and I have suffered multiple concussions over the years.

The NHL, NCAA and USA Hockey have all taken steps, in regards to their rulebooks, towards eliminating this problem. USA Hockey instituted a head contact penalty a number of years ago which punishes any contact to the head, even with the shoulder, and NCAA ice hockey did the same a few years later. This season the NCAA upped the ante. The minimum penalty for a direct head shot results in the player being ejected from the game. The NHL implemented it’s first head contact rules this season as well but with a caveat. It is only a penalty if the hit is on the player from the blind side or vulnerable position. If all other aspects of the hit are legal and it is delivered from the front, there is no penalty.

These shoulder pads were introduced in the early 90's by football gear company Douglas.

My generation saw the fastest evolution of hockey equipment, perhaps in the history of the sport. I learned at an early age that in could just as easily injure myself with a body check as I could my opponent. I truly believed that whenever I was delivering a body check, I was trying to drive my opponent into next week. In hindsight, that was only partially true.

Helmets, shoulder and elbow pads, the equipment primarily for doling out the punishment, have gone from padding designed with the sole purpose of protecting the player to something that borders on body armor. They do a better job of protecting the players but with the improvement in safety to the person wearing the equipment, but the amount of damage this same equipment can dole out has increased perhaps at an even greater rate.

This summer, I was asked to take a survey for the NCAA regarding the proposed rule changes for ice hockey. My jaw hit the floor when I read the proposal that players be permitted to wear visors instead of full-facial protection. My gut reaction was no way. The NCAA has tabled the proposal for the moment, as such, the players will be wearing full cages for the time being. I think that is going to change and soon. They cited studies that show that hockey players wearing full facial protection are significantly more likely to suffer a head injury as the reason but they are going to do more research before doing anything.

It’s difficult for me to disagree at this point. Despite my initial reaction to the survey, I said for years that players do not understand the damage they can cause because they are essentially wearing body armor. They can blow each other up with hits at full speed and the majority of the time, both players get up and walk away from the hit unscathed.

I am not saying that athletes do not respect each other or that they go out with the intention of injuring each other any more than players did in the past. What they do not respect is the potential damage that can be inflicted to either themselves or the person they are hitting. Players from earlier eras faced a much greater risk of injuring themselves when delivering a hit and they were aware of it, even if only subconsciously. A player not wearing a helmet was not as likely to fly recklessly into an opponent along the glass because he was just as likely to bang his head off the glass as his opponent.

I believe the same basic principal applies to high sticks and other careless plays and that is actually where my theory originated. As a five year old starting out in organized hockey, I did not wear a cage and when I did wear a cage, it was nothing like what today’s players are wearing. To a degree, I learned from experience what the consequences of using my stick above my shoulders. The other way I learned was from the coaching I received.

Sher-Wood 5030 Shoulder Pads

If I were the king of hockey, shoulder and elbow pads would be reduced in size and manufactured from softer, less rigid materials. There is no reason for hockey players to be wearing football equipment. The same basic change has already taken place with goaltender equipment and there has not been an increase in injuries based on that change. I have seen many players at higher level beginning to go this route on their own. The Sher-Wood 5030 equipment line, as well as 20-30 year old gear are becoming more and more common in NHL and NCAA locker rooms these days.

I cannot see a downgrade in protective equipment ever happening. At face value, it seems to be a step backwards. In reality, much of the equipment out there is overkill. As the father of a 4 year old who has started skating and has hockey on the brain almost as badly as his father, I would much rather deal with a separated shoulder or a few stitches than a concussion. With today’s technology, most shoulder injuries can be repaired as good as new. It’s very likely that we will never see the day that a helmet is invented capable of preventing all concussions.

I am scheduled to pull into town at the low slack tide, at least 8 hours before the rest of the family.  That means opening on the beach at the mouth of the river in waders for a few hours.  Once the beach starts to fill up it’s time to shed the waders and move up to the jetty.  Around noon, a quick break for lunch and to get the car unpacked.  Once that is finished, it’s back to the jetty for high tide with no further distractions for as long as it takes the family to arrive.  Once the family arrives, it’s off to the first of many lobster dinners.  Hopefully there will be a few fish to brag about over the meal.

The fishing will get toned down a little once the family arrives.  They are great about letting me log my fishing time though.  At night the 3 year old and I will take a walk down to the beach for an hour or so with the spinning gear and some clams or chunk bait.  We didn’t catch anything last year, the seaweed came in hard with the tide.  It made the fishing nearly impossible but I think he kind of gets despite his age.  He wrapped up one of our excursions with “Daddy, this was a great fishing trip!”  Pretty impressive response from a 2 year old.

I look forward to this trip each year in the same way that a kid looks forward to Christmas.  As the 3 year old puts it, I still have “2 sleeps” left before I can leave.  That doesn’t make it any easier to get to sleep each night, even at my age.  I spend all year building up anticipation for the possibility of landing a trophy, being there for a blitz or helping the 3 year old land that first striped bass.  I just can’t wait!

I have 5 trout streams within a 20 minute drive of my house and countless waters within a 2 hour drive. Most are stocked waters and none will produce fish the quality of what you will find in other parts of the country.  That’s not even counting the warm water fisheries or lakes and ponds.  When the water is to warm to fish for trout, I will chase bass, sunfish, carp or whatever else will hit a fly on any open water I can find.  If I have a few free hours on any given day, you will find me on the water with a rod in my hand.  It’s fishing and it’s fun which is what it is all about.

At my fly tying class, I met a gentleman who stated that he doesn’t fish locally, despite living just a few minutes from me.  A few months back, another friend of mine stated the same thing, despite having one of the best stocked waters in the area practically in his back yard.  Both reserve their fishing for trips to the Upper Delaware or out west.

That entire idea of that is completely beyond my comprehension.

I have visited a few world class waters.  I have been to Missoula New Zealand chasing trout.  I spend a couple of weeks every year chasing striped bass on the coast of Maine.  I go to New York after trout, salmon and steelhead several times each year.  The fishing in each of these places have completely lives up to the hype every time I have visited.

With that said, I have caught or witnessed people catch some pretty impressive fish on my local waters.  I grew up fishing a farm pond on what is now a trailer park.  Ten years ago my cousin, who at the time was 12 years old, caught and released a 5 pound largemouth in that same pond.  I have yet to live that one down.

More recently, while fishing on Darby Creek for trout, I landed a 4 pound smallmouth while nymphing for trout.  Two weeks ago, I landed a 3 inch striper hybrid as a part of my first double header (with a sunfish on the other fly) while throwing a hopper/dropper combination on Chester Creek.

Striper Hybrid

As the guys at TCO put it, that fish was totally random.  Given the fact that they have started removing the dams on the creek, hopefully we will start seeing more of this.  Regardless, had I not used a few free hours offered to me during a hockey tryout, I would not have come in contact with this fish.

A few months back, I was out on a retired fish farm with a friend and our kids.  I had the first dry fly I had ever tied in my box and used it while giving some basic instructions on how to cast a fly rod.  It was a size 12 adams and I managed to land a 2+ pound sunfish.   Even on the 5 weight, that fish put up a crazy fight.

Just behind the Rohm and Haas plant in Bristol is a good sized lagoon which had been shut off from the main portion of the Delaware river years ago.  These days, the plant pumps clean, warm water into the lagoon 12 months a year.  The result is some monster bass.  I witnessed a friend land a fish that was easily over 5 pounds.  The tail of the fish was touching the ground while he held it’s head above his waist.

All of these fish were caught locally.  They were all great fish for their own reasons.

My guide in Missoula commented about how good my casting was and noticed the fact that I always looked over my shoulder before I made my first cast.  He said that he regularly gets guys in his boat who fish all over the world who just don’t handle their fly rods that well.  Fly fishing is as much about muscle memory as any other activity.

I figure that all of those small fish I have caught and released over the years on my local waters have had more to do with the trophy quality fish I have landed on the more renowned waters than anything else.  It taught me to check what obstacles I have behind me before I cast, how to throw a fly and mend properly to get the fly where it needs to be.  It has taught me how to read water, make difficult casts and everything else that goes into fly fishing as much as anything a guide or anyone else has had to offer.

I could go on all day about the quality of fishing available to the south east PA fishermen on their local waters.  This is just a guess, but I am figuring that most people just don’t give the area enough credit.  Not every fish you catch is memorable just because it was a trophy.  That little hybrid fingerling is the perfect example.

The bottom line, don’t discount the fishing available to you locally.  You may not have a chance to catch a world record but it’s still fishing.  We all started fishing because it was fun, we enjoyed it and you never knew what you were going to land.  Not one of us picked up our first fishing rod for the opportunity to set a record.

For me, aside from the hockey, it is a chance to get out on some of the great Lake Ontario tributaries with my fly rod.  Oak Orchard and Salmon River are usually on the schedule but I also stumbled upon a little creek that I have come to enjoy just as much as the better known waters, the Oatka Creek.

On my first trip to Rochester, which was a tryout camp in July, I was a rookie to both NCAA hockey and fly fishing.  I packed my 5 wt, which was my only fly rod at the time, with the hope of arriving with a few hours of daylight left.  I made a pit stop in Cortland to visit their shop and asked if anyone had any advice regarding trout in the Rochester area.

Their first recommendation was Oak Orchard, the second was the Oatka.  I found the Oatka Creek Park in my GPS and since it was only about 10 miles from my hotel, it was my new destination.

I pulled into the lot at the park around 5PM.  As I made the short trek through the woods to the creek, I passed a few guys making their way back to the lot with spinning gear.  I gave a quick hello and asked how they made out.  They looked at my fly rod and told me they had no luck but added that I would make out far better with my fly rod than they had.

I dropped in at the downstream end of park and worked my way up and down between the end of the park and a large, deep pool at the top.  There were a couple of other fly fishermen on the water with me but we were spread out enough that we didn’t even have an opportunity to say hello.  I picked up about a half dozen browns here and there over those first few hours, they were all 10″ or below in length including a couple of little natives.

As far as entomology goes, my skills are more than a little lacking.  Despite the fact that I cannot identify what particular insect I may be looking at, I have always been pretty solid at identifying the correct pattern and size I am seeing on the water.  Around 7PM, despite the fact that I was still seeing plenty of caddis around in addition to fish still rising consistently throughout the stream, the fish simply stopped taking it.  For more than the next half hour, I was flat out stumped, almost to the point of packing it in.  There were fish everywhere and I couldn’t figure out what they were taking.

Then things just erupted…
A few large, off-white bugs started to appear.  I immediately dug into the fly box for my Lt. Cahills which immediately put me back in the business of spotting a rising fish and bringing him to hand.  Over the next hour, the bugs just got thicker and thicker.  As the hatch began to thicken, so did the reckless abandon of the fish.

For the next 2-3 hours the hatch continued to intensify and catching a fish was quite literally as easy as hitting the water.  The air was so thick with bugs that they were flying into my face and I could no longer see the two other fishermen who were still on the water.  Spooking the fish went completely out the window.  They were literally rising right at my feet.  Moving to a different location didn’t seem to bother them for more than a minute.

As darkness set in, the bigger fish began to get in on the action.  While the sun was still up, the largest fish I landed was less than 12″.  After it got dark, just about every other fish was in the 15″ range.  The night wrapped up with my biggest fish of the day, a huge rainbow (the only one I caught on the day) that came in around 20″.

All three of us fishing that day were forced to call it a night a little after 11 PM when a police officer driving by noticed our cars still in the lot.  He walked down to the edge of the creek and announced that the park was closed, it was time to call it a night.  Needless to say we were like giddy school girls as we loaded our gear in our cars talking about the night of fishing we just experienced.

When I have the extra time available I usually try to hit Oak Orchard or Salmon River on my Rochester trips, the chance to hook into a 5 pound brown or a monster salmon is just too enticing to pass up.  I always go back and pay a visit to the Oatka.  I have been skunked once and I have never been lucky enough to catch another hatch coming off like that.  Regardless, the chance of it happening gets me excited thinking about it.

It may not be considered a world class fishery like the others in the area but if you are looking for quality fishing a little off the beaten path in that area, the Oatka is just what you are looking for.

I have played the game for 35+ years, officiated for 20 and coached for 10+ seasons.  The reason I gave up coaching is simple: hockey parents.  Growing up, I was witness to some pretty bizarre incidents.  I was part of a team that was evicted from a hotel because of the party the parents threw.  We had a parent supply us with beer at way too early of an age.  One of the funniest things I witnessed was two hockey mom’s scrapping in a fight that consisted primarily of them pulling hair and throwing jelly donuts at each other.  I can proudly state that neither of my parents were involved in any of these.

Earlier this month, I worked my first youth hockey tournament in about 10 years.  It took one game for me to realize that I do not miss it even a little.

I opened with a Pee-Wee game.  Five minutes and two calls into the game, I heard the coach announce to his team that they needed to overcome my obvious personal vendetta against his team.  Keep in mind that it has been 10 years since I have worked a youth hockey game so I had never seen a single player on either team.  I also had never worked a game involving this coach at any other level.  At no point had I ever met the man walking around a rink.  In spite of those facts, I had somehow developed a personal vendetta against a team/coach that I had met for the first time a little over 15 minutes prior.

A quick visit to the bench settled him down for the time being.  Halfway through the game, a player tries to throw a body check unsuccessfully, resulting in the player delivering the check being injured.  The first thing we are taught when a player is laying on the ice is to evaluate how severe the injury is.  We always err on the side of caution, especially with kids this young on the ice.  The second thing we look for is which team has possession of the puck.  If the injured team has the puck, play gets stopped.

My assessment in this case was that the kid had gotten the wind knocked out of him and the opposing team had the puck.  I allowed play to continue and 5 seconds later, a goal was scored.  Needless to say this threw the “personal vendetta” coach into a rage.

Sometimes as an official, it’s best to allow a coach to blow off a little steam rather than going straight to a penalty.  There are some rules to this such as his choice of language and how big of a scene he is creating.  This usually works best when you go over to the bench and have him step down from the bench so you are speaking face to face.  Sometimes a gentle reminder that he needs to settle and talk is needed as well.

This coach immediately went above and beyond that.  The assistant coach was doing a much better job of keeping his head about him so I decided to explain this particular call to him.  The head coach was so fired up and loud that I had to chase him away a couple of times so I could actually speak with the assistant.  After the 3rd time I gave up on being the nice guy and assessed a penalty. I had already figured that would not be the end of it.

Before we could drop the puck for the next face-off, the coach exploded again.  I was at the end of my rope, I assessed the game misconduct and ended his game.  By that point, his team had taken on the coaches demeanor.  They continued to complain and take penalties.  They eventually lost to a team they probably could have beaten and passed the 15 penalty mark in the process, which disqualified the assistant coach from the following game in addition to the head coach we ejected earlier.

It turned out that the injured player was the son of the head coach.  My assessment on the player’s injury happened to be correct.  The player served the coach’s penalty then resumed playing.  He didn’t miss another shift the rest of the game.

The rest of the tournament did not disappoint.  I had one other run in with a Slovakian team where I learned some new words in Slovakian but that incident paled in comparison to this one.  I was not directly involved with any of the other incidents that took place, here are a few of the highlights:

• A parent was caught shining a laser pointer in the eyes of a 12 year old goaltender.
• A parent/coach walked in demanding that the female official scheduled for his game be removed because she wasn’t qualified.  He was instructed to Google her last name and after doing so, decided to drop the issue.  (She worked the 2010 Olympic games.)
• Parents demanding that a player be permitted to play after he was suspended from the tournament for kicking another player in the head.

In general, the tournament wasn’t that bad.  In general, it is a minuscule number of parents who behave this way.  There was also some pretty solid hockey played over the two weeks as well.  I was selected to work one of the finals specifically because it was a rematch between two teams that had a pretty heated game in the first go round.  It turned out to be one of the better games of the tournament and it went off with zero problems.

There is a great quote from a speech given by Don Lucia, the head coach of the Minnesota Golden Gophers.  “A lot of people think I have the best job in hockey.  And I tell them, I think have the second best in hockey.  The best job is being the head coach at an orphanage; no parents to deal with.”  If you are involved with youth hockey in any way and you happen to be reading this, please invest the 9 minutes and 4 seconds it will take to watch this video.

If I were the King of Hockey, I would make this video a requirement for any parent who walks into a pro-shop to buy their kid hockey skates.

For our honeymoon, The Wife and I toured New Zealand for a couple of weeks. She adjusted to the time difference almost immediately, I never did. I was wide awake at 4 AM every morning while she slept in until 9 or 10. As a result, I was able to log 4 or 5 hours of fishing every day without missing a step in regards to the honeymoon.

The one exception to that was on some of the longer legs of our journey.   New Zealand posts public fishing areas with small square signs along the road.  Once in a while, we would make our pit stops at one of the public fishing areas and I would squeeze in an extra half hour which I referred to as “stretching my legs”.

On the way from Taupo to Napier, we were about 2 hours in and both agreed we were overdue for a break.  As luck would have it, we passed a river preserve with posted fishing access. We were in a tiny town which didn’t have too many options as far as recreation so The Wife agreed to a fishing stop.

As we reached the back of parking area, we noticed that people had pulled their cars up to the edge of the river. It wasn’t just SUV’s and trucks, there were all types of cars parked on both sides of the river. We hesitated a bit at first but the river bank was made up of tightly packed gravel and the variety of cars parked all over the place gave us just enough confidence to give it a go.

We pulled through onto the bank and turned right to stay away from the crowds, most of whom were there swimming. That took us underneath of the highway we had just come down on and into a nice open area with no-one within several hundred years in either direction. The Wife put the seat back and napped while I wet a line. No fish combined with a sunny, 90+ degree temperatures and the lack of ozone over NZ led to a short break.

I loaded the fishing gear back up and we headed back up the river bank to resume the trip with me behind the wheel. As we approached the underpass, the front end of the car seemed to bounce and all of a sudden we couldn’t move. Upon further investigation, it turned out I had driven over one of the pilings from an old overpass. Apparently, I caught enough of it to get us up onto it but not enough to hold. Not only had we slipped off, but the weight of the car had driven the wheel into the gravel with the piling caught in the frame behind the radiator.

Our attempts at freeing the car led to nothing more than a hole in the radiator from a piece of re-bar sticking out of the piling, prompting a call to the rental car company. An hour later, I watched helplessly as the tow truck drove by for the first time. I missed him the second time 20 minutes later. I eventually managed to flag him down by jumping in front of his truck with my rental agreement as he came back down the highway.

To put it very simply, Mike, the tow truck driver looked scary. We were stranded in a somewhat rural area of a foreign country and the person who comes to help looked like something straight out of the movie Deliverance. He hadn’t shaved in days, he was dirty and sweaty and I doubt he had ever visited a dentist.

Mike took one look at our car and immediately began preparing to hook up to the back bumper of the car. I pointed out that what he was about to do would definitely not be good for the car. He made an attempt at lifting the front end of the car but the frame was flush against the gravel causing the bumper covers to shift. There was no way this car was coming off without pulling from the back end. His response was pretty straightforward, “You bought the extra insurance right?”

He hooked up the car and advised us to make some space. The car came off the piling pretty easily. Just as easily as the front bumper, radiator, grille and one of the quarter panels came off the car. We knew it was completely free when the air conditioner exploded spraying a cloud of whatever was inside. Honestly, I think Mike was enjoying himself and looking back now, so were The Wife and I.

Mike cleaned up the scraps and the three of us loaded into the tiny cab of his truck where he explained that we had a 2 hour drive back to Taupo, the city we had departed from some 4 hours earlier. That meant 2 hours in a cramped truck, which had no air conditioning, with easily the scariest looking man we had met on our entire trip. We were both a little hesitant to even get in the truck with the guy.

Turns out, Mike was one of the nicest people we met on our entire trip, which is really saying something. He was a living example of the reputation the people New Zealand have earned as being one of the most friendly countries in the world towards guests of their country. Two hours later we pulled into the rental car lot dragging a car that we had quite literally destroyed and with a new friend. During the trip Mike offered me two pieces of advise. First, don’t drive on a river bank without a 4WD vehicle. Second, don’t mention the exact location of the car when this happened unless asked directly.

Honestly, this guy treated us like we were royalty being transported around in a limousine rather than a couple of tourists in tow truck. Given what we had been through and how big of a help he was, I handed him $100. We swapped email addresses and we have touched base a few times in the years since the honeymoon.

In less than a half hour after walking into the rental lot The Wife and I were back on the road and on our way to Napier for the second time that day. Yes, we lost almost a full day to this little adventure but it was easily one of the most memorable days of our honeymoon.

I learned two lessons on this trip. The first was a clear reminder that I should never judge someone based on the way they look. The second was always take the extra insurance.  This is especially in a foreign country where your activities are the type that can lead you off the beaten path. You never know what is going to happen and even in a country that speaks English, it’s not always easy to communicate with the people you meet.

Matt is an old hockey buddy, we used to chase trout and smallmouth on the Neshaminy Creek back in our glory days.  We lost touch for too many years and reunited via Facebook a couple of years back now.  We have been getting together for beach trips ever since.  Whenever possible Matt Jr, an accomplished fisherman in his own right at the age of 5,  joins us.

RJ, aka The Kid, at 3 years old is also pretty capable with a fishing rod.  Matt headed down to Ocean City on Thursday with the family and invited us down for a night of fishing before the holiday crowds arrived.  I decided The Kid was old enough to have his first go at surf fishing.  The plans were made about a week in advance so there was plenty of time to pump him up for the trip.  Truth be told, he was really more concerned about whether he could bring his bucket and shovel than his fishing rod.  Either way, he was totally amped up for a night with “his little friend” which is funny because Matt Jr. is almost 2 years older and nearly twice his size.

Thursday arrived and following a short afternoon nap, we hit the road for OC.  In typical fashion, The Kid fell asleep approximately 3 minutes before we crossed over onto the island.  Timing is everything and we managed to meet up with Matt and the family at Fin-Atics on the way in.  After a quick stop at the house for a change of clothes, we were on the beach with Matt and his family.

When we left Philly that afternoon, it was nearly 90 degrees and humid.  What a difference 70 some odd miles makes.  The beach was some 20 degrees cooler, with a steady breeze and no humidity.  Compared to where we started, it was cold on that beach.  Unfortunately, I had dressed The Kid for the Philly weather and not the temperatures in Ocean City.

Neither Matt nor I caught a fish or even draw a hit in the couple of hours we logged.  Out on the beach, with the total lack of structure, the wind seemed even more harsh than it did back on the streets.  Six ounces of lead wasn’t enough to hold bottom.

The Kid never even noticed the fishing.  He opened the night by building a sand castle with the bucket and shovel he brought.  He eventually shifted to playing in the ocean with me jumping waves.  Eventually he built up the courage to give the waves a go on his own which was probably a mistake on my part.  It only took three or four waves before he misjudged one and was soaked from the neck down.  Given the weather, it was not a good situation.  I got him into a sweatshirt quickly but I had no answer for the soaking wet bathing suit.

Matt’s wife, who will from this day forward be known to me as “The Saint”, immediately stepped up and offered to take all three of the kids back to the house.  I resisted but probably not as much as I should have.  She walked back to the house leaving Matt and I to our fishing.  Both of us felt almost immediately guilty, for me it took all of the fun out of the fishing.  Personally, I spent the next 15-20 minutes having the least amount of fun fishing I have ever had.

Matt and I met up at the beach cart at the same time and with the same thought.  Neither of us wanted to be there any longer, we both felt guilty about his wife taking all three kids while we stayed on the beach.  We loaded up the gear, headed back to the truck and made our way back to the house.  We pulled up to hear The Kid giggling through the bathroom window.  Matt’s wife had thrown them into the tub and they were having a grand old time.  It didn’t do much to appease my guilt though.  Matt and I cleaned up the gear while the kids finished their baths then The Kid and I hit the road for home.

All told on the day we caught zero fish. The Kid never even touched a fishing rod.  What he did do was have a great couple of hours on the beach with his friends.  Really though, when it’s all said and done, isn’t that the reason Matt and I have been going to the beach in the first place?  In all of the trips we have made together over the past few years we have only gotten into one striped bass and one blue fish.  Outside of that we have never caught anything more than sand sharks.  What makes the trips worth while is spending a few hours on the beach with a friend.